Central America & Africa is NOT for Sale!!!

MS mediates co-operation between Kenya, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Matildah Obeyia Musumba is the first African development workers who works in Central America.

Everything began last year with an exchange of experiences during a workshop on intercultural co-operation that was held at the MS training centre in Tanzania.

The next step took place when MS partner organisations in Africa and Central America met in May of this year to prepare a document titled “The Nairobi Consensus”, an alternative from the South to the Copenhagen Consensus, which was put forth by the British magazine The Economist and the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute. The purpose of the exercise was to carry out a cost-benefit analysis regarding the various approaches to strategies aimed at poverty reduction.
Starting on 15 November, and for a period of about two weeks afterwards, NGO representatives from Kenya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala will meet again, this time in El Salvador, in order to discuss a merger of the campaigns titled “Central America is not for Sale” and “Africa is not for Sale”. The host of the meeting is CESTA – Friends of the Earth, an MS partner organisation. The mediators of this contact between continents are MS Kenya and MS Central America.

Both campaigns work in defence of the local environment against the devastating consequences of neo-liberal policies and the mega-projects of international transnationals, such as for example the physical infrastructure projects in Mesoamerica that form part of the Puebla-Panama Plan.

The first South-South project
There are several “firsts” in this project, both for MS and for the organisations from the South. Thus it will be the first time that MS acts as a mediator in the co-operation towards a common campaign between two continents from the South. It is also the first time that an African development worker is posted to Central America.

The Kenyan anthropologist Matildah Obeyia Musumba began her work as an MS development worker in Kenya, where she supported Kenyan NGOs in their preparation for the workshop with their Central American counterparts. She thereupon travelled to El Salvador to contribute to the final preparations for the upcoming meeting. When it concludes on 3 December, Matildah Obeyia will have become a key person regarding follow-up to this effort in both Central America and Africa.